Podcast Overview
<p>Sam and Otabek cover all things money, tech, AI, & more.</p>
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
5/11/2026
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Recent Episodes
July 13, 2026
OpenUSD's vs USDT, Bitget's 100M Users, Banks to Buy Fiserv Debit Network, Swift's Tokenized Ledger
<p>OpenUSD launched with 140 backers. Bitget Wallet crossed 100 million users. US banks are trying to buy their way around Durbin. And Swift just went live with a blockchain-based shared ledger for tokenized bank deposits. This episode covers all four.</p><p>Sam sat down with Alvin, COO of Bitget Wallet, to break down OpenUSD's consortium stablecoin model, why it shifts stablecoin yield from the reserve layer to the distribution layer, and what Bitget's 100 million user milestone actually measures. We also get into why Bitget is betting on emerging markets over the US and UK, how the wallet works without a banking license, and where AI agent payments are headed.</p><p>Then Otabek and Sam cover the week's biggest infrastructure news.</p><p>JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and PNC are reportedly in informal talks to acquire Star and Accel, the debit networks owned by Fiserv, whose stock has fallen sharply this year. The real motive is the Durbin Amendment, which caps debit interchange fees for large banks when transactions route over an outside network, but exempts banks that own the network itself. It is the same loophole logic behind Capital One's acquisition of Discover, and we discuss whether this leads to more merchant and consumer costs, and whether the payments world is fragmenting instead of consolidating around a few big rails.</p><p>We also break down Swift's new blockchain-based shared ledger, now ready for initial use after nine months of development. Seventeen banks across six continents, including ANZ, BNP Paribas, Citi, DBS, HSBC, Lloyds, MUFG, Standard Chartered, and UBS, are piloting live transactions using tokenized bank deposits instead of stablecoins. We get into how this differs structurally from USDT and USDC, why it overlaps with a separate live initiative from Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, and NatWest, whether Swift's 11,500-bank network gives it a structural edge over consortium stablecoins like OpenUSD, and why smaller emerging markets, including Central Asia, are still missing from every major cross-border rail being built right now.</p><p>Subscribe for weekly conversations on payments, stablecoins, and fintech infrastructure. Leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.</p><p>TIMECODES:</p><p>00:00 Cold open</p><p>00:54 Bearish on trading, bullish on stablecoins</p><p>01:31 Open USD: 140 companies, one stablecoin</p><p>02:45 Cathie Wood's warning: can OUSD beat USDT and USDC?</p><p>03:40 The three layers: reserve, distribution, network</p><p>06:29 Governance: getting 140 rivals to agree</p><p>07:38 Trading vs payments — two different games</p><p>08:56 Inside Bitget Wallet: 100M users, cards and QR</p><p>11:47 Why emerging markets, and the "borderless generation"</p><p>13:03 $177B settled, and no banking licence</p><p>14:15 Can AI agents make payments?</p><p>16:48 Will the wallet become your bank account?</p><p>18:48 First time ever: payments overtake trading</p><p>21:19 Why not the US, UK and Europe?</p><p>23:00 News desk: Otabek is back</p><p>23:29 Story 1: Big banks want to own a debit network</p><p>27:14 The Durbin loophole and the Capital One precedent</p><p>29:28 Story 2: Is SWIFT a monopoly?</p><p>30:25 SWIFT's blockchain ledger: 17 banks, tokenized deposits</p><p>33:09 Fragmentation — is anyone actually coordinating?</p><p>34:42 The corridors nobody serves</p><p>37:25 Wrap: the ground is shifting</p>
July 6, 2026
SpaceX's & Musk's AI Phone; OpenAI Gives US Gov 5% Stake; Stripe, Visa & Coinbase vs Tether & Circle
<p>140 companies just launched a stablecoin to take on Tether and Circle. Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Amex, BlackRock, Coinbase, Ripple, Google, Shopify, and DoorDash are all behind Open USDT. Unlike USDC and USDT, most of the reserve income gets shared back with partners instead of kept. Stripe already made it the default for its businesses. Circle's stock dropped 17% on the news, and CEO Jeremy Allaire publicly pushed back, calling the model unsustainable.</p><p>OpenAI has reportedly proposed giving the US government a 5% stake worth $42.6 billion. Sam Altman wants Google and Meta to do the same, folding it into a sovereign wealth fund-style vehicle. Anthropic has refused any government equity arrangement. A regulator becoming a shareholder is a conflict of interest waiting to happen.</p><p>Europe's MiCA rules kicked in July 1, and Tether's USDT just got locked out of EU exchanges, including Coinbase, Kraken, and Crypto.com. Circle's USDC stays compliant. Tether says MiCA's reserve rules, which force issuers into smaller, less capable European banks, could hurt consumers more than protect them.</p><p>SpaceX reportedly showed investors an AI phone prototype sleeker than an iPhone, ahead of its IPO. Musk denies it. The device would run on a custom OS built around xAI, and could position SpaceX to take on Verizon and AT&T in wireless. AI hardware has a graveyard already, Humane and Rabbit both flopped.</p><p>Klarna just won nearly $2 billion from Google. A Swedish court found Google illegally favored its own shopping service over Klarna's PriceRunner for 15 years. It's the largest antitrust award in Swedish history. Google is appealing.</p><p>ElevenLabs doubled its valuation to $22 billion in five months. The AI voice startup holds under 1% of the broader AI voice market, and independent leaderboards rank Google's Gemini TTS and Inworld ahead of it. The valuation is being driven by enterprise distribution, not the best model.</p><p>Subscribe for weekly breakdowns of the news shaping fintech, crypto, and payments, and let us know what you think of the new format in the comments.</p>
June 29, 2026
OpenAI Wants to Delay Its IPO, Binance Is Getting Kicked Out of Europe, WorldPay Is Down;
<p>WorldPay went offline during England vs Ghana. Pubs, restaurants, Tesco — none of them could take card payments for hours. Transaction volumes in bars were up 148% that day. The cause was a third-party power grid disruption. Cash lines formed.</p><p></p><p><strong>OpenAI</strong> is pushing its IPO to 2027. Sam Altman won't go public below a $1 trillion valuation while burning $21B a year and paying Google, Microsoft, and AWS for the compute it needs to compete against them.</p><p></p><p><strong>Airwallex</strong> raised $320M at $11B, up from $8B in December. Revenue grew 74% to $1.3B annualized. A Ramp board member publicly called it a Chinese data backdoor. The CEO rejected it. Make of that what you will.</p><p></p><p><strong>Meta</strong> is building a prediction market app. 3.5 billion daily users, AI-powered, starting with virtual points. The ad revenue and data play is obvious. Kalshi just raised at a $40B valuation, doubling from $22B two months ago.</p><p></p><p><strong>Starling</strong> Bank deployed an AI agent running on Gemini that intercepts payments it suspects are fraud and asks the customer questions before the money moves. APP fraud hit $576M in the UK last year.</p><p></p><p><strong>Binance</strong> suspended EU operations after failing to get a MiCA license from Greece, Latvia, or Ireland. Revolut immediately ran a campaign targeting their customers.</p>
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<p>Sam and Otabek cover all things money, tech, AI, & more.</p> - How often does this podcast release new episodes?
This podcast updates daily.
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